On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 10:15:01AM -0300, David Bremner wrote: > Julian Wollrath <jwollr...@web.de> writes: > > > I prepared a new version, which keeps the changes in the rules minimal but > > since upstream changed the building process a little bit, minimal changes > > were > > needed to get it build. The massive changes of the copyright file were also > > needed so that it would be machine readable according to the specifications > > in > > http://dep.debian.net/deps/dep5/. > > This kind of change (changing the copyright file format) is not usually > acceptable in an NMU, unless cleared with the maintainer.
I just want to add that I very much agree with that changing the copyright file format does not belong in an NMU. > Although many > maintainers consider the use of the machine readable format to be a best > practice, I'm not one of those maintainers. I prefer the old plain text format. > it does not have the force of policy, I'm happy with that. > and the absence of > machine readable formatting of debian/copyright is at most wishlist bug, > i.e. something that the submitter might like, but the maintainer might > or might not agree is an improvement. I have so far not seen any benefit from the "machine readable formatting". Actually, I think that developing tools to extract all copyright and license information from the upstream software would be a better investment of time than the time spent by those many packagers hand-coding that "machine readable format". > > Note that while it is not especially likely, it is possible to introduce > release critical bugs (violations of policy "must"s) by editing of > debian/copyright. I agree. It is better to simply quote the exact texts from the upstream software. > For more information, see section 12.5 of Debian > policy. > > Pretty much the same thing holds for changing packaging formats from 1.0 > to 3.0 (quilt), which you did not do here, but is a common beginner > mistake in NMUs. I also agree that changing this aspect does not belong in an NMU. > > Thanks for your efforts, and don't get too discouraged, more experienced > contributors make similar mistakes. That is unfortunately very true. I also learn while sponsoring packages from beginning package maintainers. Regards, Bart Martens -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-mentors-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120529190628.ga21...@master.debian.org